Almost all desktop systems employ a landscape orientation of their displays. This is characterized by a display that is wider than it is tall. Video monitors and televisions also utilize landscape orientations. However, handheld device orientations vary based on the desired form factors of the products themselves. Often, the device uses a portrait orientation instead, which is characterized by a display that is taller than it is wide.
Due to the prevalence of systems that employ landscape orientations, there is a corresponding prevalence of displays that are designed for landscape orientations. Eventually, as there is more demand for portrait oriented images, portrait oriented displays will become available. But portrait displays are currently more expensive than their landscape counterparts.
It should be noted that in the long run, it is in the best interest of the product developers to eventually migrate to a natively portrait display for use with portrait oriented images. This will provide the maximum power efficiency and highest performance for the display. However, the lack of availability and/or higher cost of natively portrait displays can outweigh the power and performance advantages. Moreover, even when natively portrait displays do become available, there will be devices which need to switch between landscape and portrait orientations.
The invention provides a hardware solution that rotates a landscape oriented image to a portrait orientation for display on a landscape display, and vice-versa.